“He tasted of whisky and his skin was rough where he hadnt shaved, but Mirabelle kissed him back.”

“Nothing is long ago in an archive, my dear. In the records we treat the dead as same as the living.thats the whole point of keeping papers. It doesnt matter if its a hundred years or only a few wee...”

“Didnt young people care what the generation before them had achieved? And if not, why had everyone gone through those grim difficult wartime years?”

“Jack had been the love of her life and he was gone. It seemed now that there had never been bad times, though she knew that wasnt true.”

“Vesta was so good with paperwork you could hand her a file of drab, seemingly dull information and shed construct a story from it worthy of a novel.”

“Food in wartime Britain, she had to admit, was hardly inspiring.”

“It was nearly ten years since the peace though her memories of the war still felt fresh.”

“But who can remember pain, once its over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In lif...”

“My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it's operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely ...”